


Life isn't fair but it's life

by obaewankenope (rexthranduil)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ace Omens, Angst, Asexual Character, Asexual Characters, Crowley Was Raphael Before He Fell (Good Omens), Gabriel isn't a dick here, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Only by chance tbh, five times fic, sibling feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 18:04:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20101390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rexthranduil/pseuds/obaewankenope
Summary: The first time Uriel sees the demon Crowley, she is awfully tempted to smite him but it is not her place.





	Life isn't fair but it's life

**Author's Note:**

> So this was originally a prompt on tumblr for 5 times the Archangels notice something off about Raphael!Crowley. This... Veered off in a different direction but ¯\\_(🙃)_/¯

**Uriel:**

The first time Uriel sees the demon Crowley, she is awfully tempted to smite him but it is not her place. The demon is—according to Metatron—not to be bothered with as it is Aziraphale’s responsibility. She does not trust the fact that the Principality who guarded the Eastern Gate has not met the demon so far. But it is early days in the creation of the world and it is a rather big place when one has a mortal form.

The thing about the demon that draws Uriel’s attention even as she stands and waits for the mortal she must bless—a task she must perform, no other which makes it tedious but also rather nice to have that sort of responsibility from Her—is that Crowley does not act very demonic. He walks among the mortals, eyes on view but the humans here do not recoil, turn away in horror or disgust as they ought. It is like they know of him and have little to fear from his presence.

It is mind boggling. She watches him longer than she should, delays returning to heaven so she can follow him and see what he does for a little while. It is during this silent stalking that Uriel sees something that sticks with her for a long time.

She sees a demon of hell kneel down to a small child and heal a simple graze on the child’s knee.

Uriel flees back to heave the moment Crowley moves on from the child and she is able to sense no lingering darkness around the child. If anything, there is only a gentle softness that Uriel has vague memories of.

Memories that _hurt. _

She forgets what she saw even if the feelings it elicits linger and, when Armageddon comes, she finds herself so very angry and aggressive with the Principality beyond what she reasonably would feel at any other time. There is a memory, niggling, that has her sharper and meaner and perhaps it is grief for something she lost.

Something she longs to have back.

* * *

**Michael:**

Michael receives regular reports on the goings-on on earth. They’re detailed enough to bore even the most diligent researcher but are accompanied by a succinct summary of the time period the report covers. Sometimes they’re quite short, a couple dozen miracles for a century or two. Other times the reports are longer than a celestial tree can safely provide the paper for. They contain more detailed summaries of particular miracles attributed to the angels on earth—the Principality Aziraphale predominantly but others have visited in the past and thus are mentioned—but a particular name catches Michael’s attention like nothing else.

It’s a name that doesn’t _belong_.

She chases it up with HR and they insist it’s correct and “no we don’t know how or what for precisely, we’re not actually spies you know?” which leaves Michael in a bit of a pickle.

She has to go to earth to try and get a handle on this. If some angels—or one angel—is performing unsanctioned miracles and putting them under the name of a fallen… well that _cannot_ be allowed.

Aziraphale performs his own miracles and Michael watches him for a while until she is certain he’s not the culprit. The Principality seems far too interested in sampling mortal food—strange but not quite as disgusting as Gabriel had made it out to be—as opposed to performing miracles wily-nily.

Miracles and magic are different things for celestial beings, as all angels know. Magic is common and draws barely on their grace. It doesn’t even register on the books. But miracles. They’re a little more… noticeable. Such as miracling a falling cart so it harms no one.

Which no _angel_ performs.

Michael is there. She is watching and she recognises a miracle when she sees one—feels one. It’s unusual and a little strange to be in proximity to. Especially when there’s no other celestial beings around and Michael certainly didn’t perform the miracle.

In fact, there’s only a demon around and that demon is a serpent that’s evil to the core.  
A demon that performs a miracle that—Michael checks—is attributed to a forgotten name in the ledgers and leaves Michael confused and slightly afraid even as a righteous anger builds.

It is a sick, _sick_ joke of hell, to do that. It’s likely Lucifer’s doing. Name a demon that, give it a second name, and use it to cause a bit of chaos in heaven. It’s entirely disgusting and something Michael despises even as she recognises the skill that sort of thing takes.

She resolves to keep an eye on the demon Crowley and that name. Any miracle he performs will be Known to her. Michael won’t allow the serpent to hide from her any longer.

Of course, the irony of this thinking isn’t lost on her after the apocalypse doesn’t happen and she learns that it was never Lucifer’s doing, that She Planned This. Michael doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge.

* * *

**Gabriel:**

Gabriel sees the demon Crowley for the first time from a distance. He is frozen at the sight Crowley presents. Red hair. Flowing robe. Black cloth. It draws him and makes his heart hurt a little. The hurt becomes anger when the demon turns and Gabriel sees golden eyes with slitted pupils. How dare a creature from beyond Her gaze look- look-

_How dare it._

He longs to smite it, wipe this mockery from the earth, but She stays his hand. It’s not time. There are things to do and it is needed. It has a purpose. What that purpose is, Gabriel does not know. He doesn’t think to ask before She falls silent and speaks no more to the Host.

There is something strange of Crowley but Gabriel does not recognise it. He cannot stand go look at the demon long enough to figure it out. Not until the airbase. Not until he realises the truth and why She stopped him back before the earth began.

He _knew_ something wasn’t right with the demon but Gabriel never thought it would be this.

His brother. The one who loved more than any of them. Who hurt more than any of them.

Gabriel wishes he didn’t know. He wishes.

* * *

**Uriel and Michael:**

They are on earth together for a temporary assignment. Smiting of a city. Its not really their job—well, it is, but not in the way it is written by mortals—and neither of them look forward to it. Humans are... strange and distant and very weak compared to them but they are still alive. They still have souls.

Uriel feels a little more than detachment when she notices red hair among the crowd of humans fleeing the city she is to obliterate. She wonders if Michael sees it but there are orders to follow.

The demon will go with the humans and be smote if he is too close. One less demon to battle at the end.

Michael stiffens even as she continues to summon her power. Together they will raise Sodom and later Gamorrah. But right now, Uriel sees her sister—her big sister—stare at red hair and she looks like she is grieving and doesn’t realise it.

Uriel does not realise that she herself looks the same when she sees red hair and golden eyes.   
And even as they together obliterate Sodom, there is something else flaring, darker and harsher than any Grace that seems to slip between their power and protect. It protects. Wraps around a few mortals and spares them obliteration from angelic Grace.

It is not possible.

And yet it is.

All those who survive are children, clustered around a taller figure with red hair and golden eyes. Michael and Uriel stand across the expanse of city that now is salt on the ground. This is no-man’s land before the term is invented. Neither can cross the expanse and Uriel does not understand.

“Come,” Michael commands and Uriel follows. “We have done our work here.”

But they did not complete it. All from Sodom were to die. And yet there are children who live, protected by a demon and there is no sense there, no reason. A demon does not protect. A demon destroys.

After everything that happens thousands of years later, Uriel will understand that Crowley is a demon that defies all rules. She will remember the children of Sodom more fondly than before when she learns even the Fallen can be guardians of innocence.

All it takes is a choice.

* * *

**Uriel, Michael, and Gabriel:**

They sit together, three of the First who remain in heaven. It is quiet between them but it is a quiet born of contemplation and making hard decisions. Decisions about who they wish to be and what they wish to do.

“Well, the hellfire didn’t work.” Uriel looks at Gabriel and Michael, breaking the silence surrounding them. It’s a little like poking a hole in the snow, difficult and strange and you don’t really expect the sudden rush of sound around you after being blanketed in snow for so long.

“Nor the holy water,” Michael admits.

“Did you think it would?” Uriel asks. Michael shakes her head. “Then why go through with it?”

“Because we needed the hellfire and hell wanted holy water in return,” Gabriel answers. “A trade off.”

“But the fire did not work either, and we do not know why,” Uriel points out and both Archangels grimace.

“I have an inkling of how Aziraphale survived the hellfire,” Gabriel admits after a long moment. “But I really don’t want to test it.”

“Why?”

Michael answers for their brother. “Because Raphael will kill us before we can find out for sure.”

“We are his siblings,” Uriel says, “and he is Fallen. He cannot fight us all.”

Gabriel sighs. “Uriel, he’s the oldest, Lucifer’s twin. He’d kill us all before he’d let us near Aziraphale even if he died stopping us.”

Uriel frowns. She is the youngest. She did not know Raphael well. He is a memory that is vague and distorted by time even though an angel has perfect recall. Aziraphale rebelled and ought to be punished for it but... Gabriel is right.

“He loves him.”

Michael sighs. “Yes,” she says, “and that makes him more deadly than ever. You did not see Raphael fight Lucifer in heaven. Did not see the damage they caused. I cast Lucifer out but it was Raphael who did him the most harm. We thought he died in the process, Mother told us Raphael’s greatest power is love. It’s why he was always the best healer.”

“He still heals,” Uriel says. “I saw him. He healed a child and I did not understand it. I thought it a ploy or a trick and yet I sensed no evil from him. It... I found it unsettling and did not understand why. Now I do.”

“He’s the only demon who can heal because he never meant to fall.”

Michael and Uriel look at Gabriel.

“How do you know that?” Michael asks.

“Mother,” is Gabriel’s answer. “She told me after the trials. The first time she has spoken to us in _thousands_ of years and it was to tell me to leave them be. It- it-“

“It is not fair.”

“As the humans say, ‘life isn’t fair, its just life’,” Michael says and Uriel cannot argue with that.

None of them can.

“I _want_ to hate him,” Gabriel admits. “I should. He’s fallen. But... _He’s Raphael_.”

“I know.” Michael gently touches Gabriel’s arm. They do not usually touch each other.

The three of them know the truth of Crowley now. They know it and they cannot accept it but they must. It is Her decree that they _accept_ it.

Accept the angel who said no to the apocalypse and the demon who did not fall so much as accidentally fell down.

It is not fair.

But God is not fair. God is God. And they must live with that.

* * *

**Aziraphale:**

Aziraphale has always known there is something off about Crowley. Crawly as he was, Crowley he became, the demon carried with him an air of More. It was slight and difficult to sense if you weren’t adept at that sort of thing but—well—Aziraphale has a few talents he’s rather proud of.

The children on the Ark do not belong there but the red hair and golden eyes that watch him warily steal any complaint from Aziraphale’s tongue before he can air it. He finds he does not mind that when he spies a small bundle of cloth pressed against Crowley’s chest, a hand protectively cradling it. This is a kindness demons aren’t supposed to possess or express. It makes Crowley all the more intriguing to Aziraphale.

“Showed him all the kingdoms in the world,” Crowley says as they watch Her son suffer for humanity. Aziraphale finds the casual admission to be a little shocking. There is a wealth of feeling in the words, each letter loaded with meaning that weights them down. Grief is not an emotion a demon should feel when someone suffers. There is no glee, no satisfaction. Only grief.

All those little meetings, the random encounters, chance visits to the same city. It all builds up to The Arrangement and something that might be friendship were they not on opposite sides.

Though when Aziraphale spies Crowley showing kindness, being gentle, he wonders if they’re really on opposite sides at all. Wonders if Crowley is not instead straddling the two, one foot in each camp so to speak.

The revelation at the airbase, stood with the child of the devil, is one that doesn’t so much surprise Aziraphale so much as confirm some suspicions he’s harboured for centuries now. It is a relief to be proven right, sort of.

Aziraphale certainly never thought Crowley would be an archangel. Had been. Still is. No demon can heal after all. Not like Crowley does.

Aziraphale has been healed by Crowley before. He should have guessed then but the knowledge of the battle between the Archangels was for only the Archangels. All others know only the basics. So he shouldn’t have guessed who Crowley was, even as he thinks he should. Its a logical paradox of thinking that he’s taken out of by a gentle hand on his arm and fingers in his hair.

“Your head seems okay,” Crowley—Raphael—says. “Only a minor graze. Gone now by the way.”

Aziraphale knows. He felt it. The tingling pulse of Grace healing him. Grace a demon does not have. Grace that Crowley does. He’d asked once, a few centuries ago—sometime when the Romans were cutting a bloody path through Europe—how Crowley could heal him and how come it felt like Grace. Crowley had made some excuse that he was using Aziraphale’s own Grace to heal him, that Crowley was just coaxing it out with some slightly demonic magic.

He’d accepted that excuse then because Aziraphale hadn’t known if it was true. But now he knows.

Now he knows and he is thankful that he does. Thankful that Crowley didn’t run away. That he isn’t in Alpha Centauri. That he’s here, with Aziraphale.

Them against heaven and hell.

There’s no place Aziraphale would rather be.

“Thank you my dear,” he says, smiling and leaning in to Crowley’s hand on his head, fingers in his hair. “Thank you.”

“Any time angel,” Crowley replies quietly, softly, kindly and Aziraphale’s smile widens. “Promise.”

No matter what may come for them now, Aziraphale knows they cannot be separated. He won’t allow it. God Herself could try and still Aziraphale would refuse. He knows where he belongs now.

By the side of a fallen archangel whose only sin was to love. To love so much it destroyed him.

Aziraphale is quite ready for love to destroy him if it means he gets to be with Crowley. He won’t regret a moment of it either. Never.

Never.   
  


**Author's Note:**

> Angst and fluff. I provide.
> 
> Comments and kudos sustain me :)


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